Sometimes you or your players aren't really up for a world-saving grim and dark epic. At this point, knowing how to change the tone of your game can be really important. Pitching your game at a different level can be quite doable without much change to the core mechanics of a D&D game.
Here are some quick changes you can make to change up the tone of your game, whether you're playing with kids or just want a lighter game than normal. Tone of Quests - A typical D&D game might involve seeking out ingredients for curing a plague, getting home just in time to save a few after horrible casualties. For a lighter tone, having the plague incapacitate people and require them to be cared for, but not die, lowers the tension level and means that the players aren't under quite the same level of concern for the victims. - A band of bugbears or orcs might capture their prisoners for use as servants, rather than as food. - War might be threatened between two kingdoms, but this could be averted by quick-thinking adventurers able to bring proof of the conspiracy to the rulers in charge. - A crazy wizard might be kidnapping local animals and turning them into monsters temporarily, but their tower might contain an artifact they've used to 'hold' concentration on the change. If it's broken, it might be able to cancel all of their spells and save the animals. Tone of Combat - Using monsters rather than humans or other 'people' as enemies can make the game less morally-conflicting, and humanoids who fight to stakes other than 'to the death' can be really useful. - Bandits or goblins might capture enemies to ransom them (and poorly-trained ones might not tie their prisoners up well). - Having enemies pause to grandstand, caper, or be doing less-than-optimal things like trying to get hold of a magic ring rather than fighting people directly can be handy. - Describing hit point loss as "avoiding death narrowly" rather than being wounded is one way of making action still feel exciting, and danger still feel present, without describing gory blows. - For enemies and PCs, being reduced to 0 hit points might mean being defeated rather than wounded or killed. It's important to allow enemies to genuinely give up, and not undermining that by having them lie about it. This way you reinforce that allowing enemies to live is a good thing. Tone of Adventuring - Here, 5e's "long rest cures just about everything" mechanic can really be handy. If every day is a new day, it means that players generally don't have to worry about too much in terms of consequences. - Exploring ancient ruins, forbidden dungeons, and lost tombs can still be a thing. These might have been blocked off because they're dangerous to people, and questing into them can be necessary to recover something, find a clue, or discover a bad guy's identity, rather than for treasure. If you've got any ideas you've used, leave them in the comments! Also posted on Game Masters Stash on 22 December 2021. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm Luke. He/him pronouns. Archives
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